Yes, anything you are able to export to shp can easily be used as a WMS source. For example you can take your ArcIMS shp layers and publish them with GeoServer(or
MapServer). Then you can use the DeepEarth.Client.Services.WMS

I’ve ported some small projects to Silverlight this way, but I used the MapControl CTP.
http://www.cadmaps.com/gisblog/?p=74

DeepEarth would work as well, and as an added bonus doesn’t have any CTP issue to be concerned about.

ArcIMS would be a very good candidate for an upgrade and you would save yourself or your client some annual license fees as well.

See:http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcims/index.html

“Note: ESRI's development of ArcIMS is now limited. Our server GIS development efforts are devoted primarily to ArcGIS Server”

what we are trying to do is we are trying to fetch those map services which are being hosted on ArcIMS administrator. If you could tell us whether the deepearth map control supports fetching services from there it would be of great help. We do not want
to get into any third party, hence the solution should involve only ArcIMS\ArcGIS and Deepearth.